Five young men have been sent to the dock for sexually exploiting seven teenage girls in Chisinau for money in the spring of 2022, authorities said in a statement Thursday, February 9.

Among the youngsters is a girl who was 17 at the time of the crime.
According to prosecutors from the Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Organized Crime and Special Cases (PCCOCS) and officers from the Police Center for Combating Trafficking in Persons (CCTP), the acts took place in April-September 2022.

“Some of the teenage girls were recruited through girls who were already being sexually exploited, through direct communication with some of the perpetrators (with whom they knew each other previously, as well as from previous romantic relationships) or through social media.”

According to the authorities, the victims are from Chisinau, Causeni and Ialoveni. Most of the teenagers come from families with precarious financial situations or from families with separated parents and were therefore persuaded to provide sexual services for a fee – both in the apartments where they were staying and at the destinations requested by the clients.

Currently, four of them are in pre-trial detention at the request of PCCOCS prosecutors, another defendant is under house arrest and the young defendant is being investigated at large. Investigations continue into their other accomplices.

According to the law, child trafficking committed in the circumstances described in the criminal case is punishable by 15 to 20 years’ imprisonment or life imprisonment. Until the sentence is pronounced by the Buiucani court in Chisinau and becomes final, the defendants are presumed innocent under the law.

The authorities state that, “in addition to the financial or family situation in which the teenagers found themselves, they were also coerced by the defendants by physical force when they refused to serve clients”.

The young defendants were aged 18 and 19 at the beginning of the criminal activity; the leader of the group was 24 years old and was reported wanted, having previously been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for robbery; and the young woman who directly coordinated the activity of the teenagers and managed the finances of the group derived from the exploitation of the teenagers – 17 years old. They are from Chisinau, Ialoveni and Telenesti, and two are from Causeni.